Moore Outdoors With Chester Moore 07/26/24--Working with kids in special wildlife projects and a call from Ted Nugent

• Chester talks about working with kids in special wildlife projects and Ted Nugent calls in to give Chester a special tribute.
  
  

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to More Outdoors on News Talkfive sixty k LVII. This is Chester
Moore and I have such an amazingtime doing this broadcast. Getting to share
my love, passion and enthusiasm forthe great outdoors is so important to me,
and I thank you all for listeningand all the comments I get on
social media and the emails I geton comments on the program, animal sightings,

(00:24):
all kind of news tips you sendme. You are in a big
way part of the program, butall of the feedback that I get and
I appreciate that very much. Lastweekend I had one of the greatest honors
of my life bestowed upon me.The port author Sirtoma named me their award
recipient for the year and gave mea banquet in their honor at the Museum

(00:46):
of the Gulf Coast. I wasgiven the Service to Mankind Award. But
my friend Ed Custer did something veryspecial. My wife had put together an
awesome video of people from our WildWish's program kids we work with friends in
the outdoors, media and conservation worlddoing tribute. It's a great surprise to

(01:06):
me, and that's a long track. Could run that on the program,
but I do have a two minutesnippet that my friend Ed Kessler got my
dear friend and frequent guest on MoreOutdoors over the years, Ted Nugent to
say, and I want to sharethis with you. It's a really fun
thing. It's always great to hearTed, and it's a real honor and

(01:29):
privilege to have this kind of thingsaid about you. Don't take it lightly.
I play this because if I playthis for you and I talk about
this award, it holds me accountable. Hopefully I will be able to keep
doing that service to mankind and wildlife. I know I will, but this
will inspire me to do even more. And I thank port author Sir Thomas
so much for their hard work,and my good friend Ted Nugent for saying

(01:52):
some incredibly kind things. All Right, my fellow Americans and my fellow Texans,
real freedom lovers, real America.Ted Nugent here reporting for duty from
the rock and roll road in theinsanity of and I am driven, humbled,
inspired and motivated to say congratulations tomy blood brother Chester Moore. We

(02:14):
call it the spirit of the wildand everyone there at the Port Arthur Sirtoma
Club, You've chosen the right manfor the Service to Mankind Award because Chester
Moore is using every precious gift fromthe Lord to be the best that he
can be, and he is apositive force to reckon with for God,

(02:35):
Family, Country, Constitution, BillWrights, ten Commandments, the Golden Rule,
the man in the arena, workethic to be the best that you
can be, law and order,and all those wonderful American dream we the
people celebrations. He celebrates his resourcestewardship conservation duties to God by focusing on

(03:00):
promoting and celebrating wildlife management, conservation, real hands on boots on the ground,
environmentalism and everyone there at the PortArthur Museum of the Gulf Coast.
Chester Moore is the spirit blood brotherto all of us and God's miraculous creation.

(03:23):
The Kingdom, Zoo, Wildlife Centerand Wild Wishes have got the right
guy, Chester. I love you, buddy. I'm out here rock and
rolling, spreading truth, logic andcommon sense and everybody there, You've chose
the right man. Chester Moore isthe American spirit blood brother. Certainly Service

(03:44):
to Mankind of the Award every day, Chester, Congratulations, God bless and
God's speed. The Nugent Family verybest to you, Chester, your family
and everyone there in the Great Republicof Texas. Uncle Ted loves you all.
You know, when you hear stufflike that about yourself, it's hard

(04:05):
to digest it sometimes, you know. But I do know that I work
really hard to help others bring thelove of Christ to hurting children, to
mentor and wildlife conservation and get theword out there. And if you want
to learn more about what we do, you can go to kingdomzoo dot com.
That's kingdomzoo dot com. You canlearn a little bit about the program,

(04:26):
the basics of our program. Youcan make donations there, which we
are five on one C three.We need donations. The current economic climate
and inflation has made it very difficultto do what we do. And you
can also check us out a HigherCalling Wildlife on Facebook. Higher Calling Wildlife
is the conservation branch and what wedo is we mentor teens in our programs

(04:46):
and other teens to become wildlife conservationist. And it's a really cool thing.
And this week I'm excited to announcethat one of the kids in our program,
our Higher Calling Wildlife program, AnnaHayley, did a really incredible piece
of art and if you go toHigher Calling Wildlife on Facebook tonight, you

(05:08):
can see that artwork on there.We took her on an expedition. Me
and Lisa in Faith took her onan expedition out to the Wild Ranch Headquarters
back in May. Our good friendDebbie Haga Bush out there got to meet
Hannah, and Hannah is a veryvery gifted artist, and so we took

(05:28):
Hanna to photograph the wildlife of WildRanch Headquarters, to meet giraffes, and
she got to meet a big cameland see about, you know, fifteen
species of antelope and deer. Itwas really, really incredible fun day.
And I've driven to a highway fortyone literally hundreds of times out past the
Wyo in that part of the world, and I've never seen red sheep.

(05:51):
Red sheep are a naturally occurring wildsheep and they are technically an fertile wild
naturally occurring basically hybrid of a uraland a red sheep. That's their origins
because there was overlap between uriel andI'm excuse me, urreal and mouflon.
There were a ural and mouflon overlap. They are beautiful and I've never seen

(06:13):
them. They're pretty rare on Texasranches. I've never seen them, and
we ended up seeing a herd oflike a hundred of them, and so
we pulled over. We got mybig zoom lens and I walked Hannah up
to the fence and she was ableto take some really cool pictures and she
did a really amazing, beautiful pieceof art from this, and we're going

(06:33):
to be selling prints of that toraise money for our other outreaches for kids,
but also half the money's gonna begoing to Wild Cheap Conservation. Will
have more on that project in abouttwo weeks, but I wanted to make
sure and good give my good friendHannah a shout out tonight and know that
the more family the Kingdom Zoo WildlifeCenter, Higher Calling Wildlife Program love her

(06:56):
and believe in her and appreciate theincredible art work that she did. You
know, this is an important thingto do is young people are so creative
and for some reason, as peopleget older, they tend to lose their
creativity. I don't know how manyyoung kids it will come through just our

(07:16):
programs we do that are engaged insome kind of art, maybe drawing a
lot of drawing, some painting music, and then people get older and they
like stop doing it, and Ithink that's a real shame, and I
think it's important to invest in thisstuff for young people. And you know,
my friend Calvin Carter is one ofthe greatest wildlife artists on the planet.

(07:42):
And I mean that Calvin is heis a high school art teacher,
but he is incredible. This guy'shad you know, state duck stamps and
fresh water stamps, and has muralsand big ranches and has done some art
for us and it's just incredible.And getting to know Calvin and seeing how
so much of his prints and thingshelp conservation, getting no doctor Guy Harvey

(08:03):
and seeing how his you know,ultra high level of fundraising through artwork does
for ocean conservation made me think aboutin our program, helping kids get connected,
you know, helping kids get connectedto using artwork for conservation. So
what we've done here, Emily Odom, one of our very earliest wild which

(08:24):
is Kids number five, actually hasbeen doing conservation art for almost three years
for us. And we're gonna haveHanna doing this and we're gonna be using
to raise funds for conservation so kidscan see that they can use art to
draw or paint or whatever wildlife orsculpt and then that can help conservation and
that's a cool thing. It empowersthem. One of the most cliche things

(08:48):
that you hear is, oh,you know, kids are the next generation.
No, they're the now generation.They're alive and they can do great
things. So that's part of whatwe do. Think about Duck Unlimited banquets
and how many prints have been sold, how many millions of dollars and went
into conservation. Well, we're startingto find ways to empower kids to do

(09:11):
this stuff. Even our friends atLittle Cypress Christian Academy in Orange, we've
had elementary kids not using artwork interms of selling it, but they've raised
money for conservation projects that we've donebefore, and we've actually had some We
had some kids raise some money forthe Jerusalem Biblical zoos Persian Foul Deer program
and do artwork from Little Cypress ChristianAcademy. My good friend Lucy Klorin's class

(09:35):
over there. So kids can dothis for that as possible because we believe
in them. It's not lip service. If that award anything meant anything,
We're gonna make it unique and funopportunities for kids to connect and become now
generation wildlife conservations. We talk moreabout this when we come back on More

(09:58):
Outdoors. Welcome back to More Outdoorson the news Talk five sixty klv.
I. This is Chester More andI'm having a good time on this program.
I'm talking a little bit about theconservation efforts we're doing with Higher Calling
Wildlife. And you know, whenI think about this program, it was

(10:20):
born out of me praying one dayand hearing the words Higher Calling kind of
resonating in my spirit, and thatbegan an incredible journey that's changed the trajectory
of our ministry and my life andis really impacting kids. And I just
want to share a few stories throughour ministry work of how kids have been
incredibly impact I'm sitting in the officehere looking at pictures on the wall of

(10:45):
kids taking part in different projects,and it really does inspire me quite a
lot. One of the things thatI was so excited to get to do
was take kids to kids on anEastern Turkey release end up in Franklin County
courtesy of Texas Parks and Wildlife andthe National Wild Turkey Federation. I took

(11:09):
a kid named Dustin Wolf that usedto help out our ministry a teenage boy,
and we met our Wild Wishes girl, Emily Odom and her family up
in Franklin County. Now, ifyou've listened to More Outdoors very long,
you've heard about turkey restoration. Youknow, the Eastern turkey is a turkey
subspecies native to the eastern United Statesall the way into eastern Texas, and

(11:33):
they had a really bad time inEast Texas for a long time. Texas
Parks and Wildlife has been doing avery good job of restoring them by bringing
in birds from other states. AndI have been blessed to get to go
photograph and video some of these releases, which has been absolutely amazing, and
they have been gracious enough to allowkids to participate in releases, and you

(11:56):
took them up there. You know, these birds literally fly in from like
a state like Maine or most ofthe birds, and so I've been going
and coming from They fly in fromstate like Maine or Missouri or South Carolina,
and they are tested at a facilityfor disease. Once they get there,
they're considered releasable. They're brought outto a piece of property that Texas
Parks and Wildlife is okay to therelease sight on private ground or on a

(12:20):
public piece of ground. All theones I've been to have been on private
ground. And they are released andthey're in these cruly cool boxes that they
has like a packing slip on itand you know, it has duct tape,
but it's a National Wild Turkey Federationbox and it's you know, for
the turkeys to be shipped. Sothe kids carry the box from a truck
out into the field and then theyopen the box. And when they open

(12:43):
that box, you know turkeys,if you've ever been around them in the
wild, they usually run to retreat. But when they come out of that
box, almost everyone I've ever seenflies with ferocity. And to see a
big, huge wild turkey is abig bird fly out of that box.
And the kid just had this megasmile on their face knowing that they literally

(13:07):
had an opportunity to partake an activewildlife conservation and restoration. That is such
an incredible event that I'm so gratefulfor Texas Parks and Wildlife and National Wild
Turkey Federation for assisting us with allowinga couple of kids to participate in this.
Now when Emily came back from heror went back home from her trip.

(13:28):
She live about Wichita Falls. Shesent me a surprise. It was
a watercolor of a wild turkey likethe headshot and it was so cool.
And then we messaged her back andforth, me and Lisa, and she
was talking about wanting to do moreconservation work. So she did like an
ibex for us. She's done someother animals, she did a moose for

(13:50):
us. A lot of really reallycool stuff like that, and that was
just born out of Nobody asked herto do the artwork. That was an
outgrowth of that really really excited moment. So that kind of stuff is what
I live for. And if someonewould have taken me at you know,
fourteen fifteen, sixteen years old andallowed me to take part in a wild

(14:15):
turkey release for starters, no onehad to motivate me to work toward getting
involved in wildlife. I was fullon like I am now at sixteen seventeen
years old. That would have mademe nuclear. I mean I would have
been like totally, I mean itwould have been just a different level.
And so I kind of gauge alot of what we do through that,

(14:37):
Like how would I have responded,you know what I have been excited about,
And we try to make the experiences, you know, like something that
I would really dig, you know, And that's that's very very important to
make sure that the kids are comfortable, they're educated about what they're getting to
go do and the ramifications of it. The favorite thing we've ever done with

(14:58):
Higher Call Wildlife was taking Rihanna Hollowayout once again courtesy of Texas Parks and
Wildlife, out to Elephant Mountain WildlifeManagement Area and letting her participate in the
capture and radio callering or GPS calleringnow of desert big horn sheep. Now
this is like a very exclusive opportunityfor starters. Texas only has about fifteen

(15:24):
hundred big horns and they don't doa ton of translocations anymore. And it
was so incredible, And that wasthree years ago and Rihanna is now a
senior at Texas Tech studying wildlife management. It was a very impactful thing.
And the cool thing was they lether put the GPS caller on the biggest

(15:46):
ram that they caught that day andit was just incredible, incredible time and
incredible incredible day to see that youknow, that's a long journey. By
the way, if you're in anOrange Texas and you got to go out
to Alpine, Texas, you're talkingabout thirteen hours. That's a long shot
out there. But it is anincredible trip, and it is an inspiring

(16:07):
trip. And when you take outthere and you look and you see the
mountains in West Texas and you seehave a leena crossing the road and mule
deer and you know that they're elkout there and mountain lions. It's just
a very special part of the world. And Texas Parks a While Life has
done such a really amazing job withthat Sheep program, like we talked about
in our program last week, andfor them to allow a young girl,

(16:32):
by the way, hassistic fibrosis.She was doing pretty good at the time
and she's doing really well now,but drummed up the courage to want to
go out there and do that,and that was something I'll never forget.
So Rihanna inspires me with her reallyhard fighting attitude and her ability to go
through challenges in life and still dogreat things. And that is something that

(16:57):
means a lot to me. ButI'm giving any of these things in the
first half of the program, justto let you know, you hear me
talk a lot about Hey, checkout a higher con a wile if on
Facebook, et cetera, et cetera. These are the things we do.
You know, we need your help, We really do. We need donations,
straight up. We need donations todo this stuff, and if you'd

(17:17):
like to consider that, you candonate through Kingdomzoo dot com. Kingdomsoo Wildlife
Center, of course, is ourmothership and where we do our wild Wishes
program. Go to Kingdomzoo dot comor just you know, message me.
We'll send you a link that kindof stuff. But we are incredibly excited
to be able to connect kids withstuff like this. And if you know

(17:41):
of a kid, so let's youknow, wild Wishes, let's talk about
that a second. That's our flagshipprogram where we grant wildlife encounters of kids
have a critical illness or of losta parent or a sibling. If you
know of a kid that loves wildlife, loves animals and we'll qualify for that,
Email me Chester at chestermoord or justfind Kingdoms Wildlife Center or Higher Calling

(18:02):
Wildlife on Facebook and messages me ormy wife will answer you and we'll get
back to you quickly. We wouldlove to connect kids with these kind of
encounters. The Wild Wish program atthe time of this recording and granted one
hundred and seventy six of these wildWishes, and that is a very important
part of what we do. Wewanted to get to two hundred before the

(18:23):
end of the year, but quitefrankly, the economy is making it harder
for like travel for kids to comein, so the out of town part
of that's a little more challenging getthe moment taking kids out of town,
So we're doing mainly the local stuffat the moment, and I wish we
which is incredible. I mean,that's become the bulk of what we do.
Anyways, our facility has plenty forkids to enjoy. But if you

(18:47):
would like to connect a kid withthis the loss of parent or a sibling
critical illness, message me Chester atChestermore dot com or on higher calling Wildlife
for Kingdoms Wildlife Center on Facebook,and we would love to connect them.
You know, it's all about helpingthose kids, It's all about giving them
hope, because what happens when kidshave a tragedy if they have a tragedy

(19:11):
on you know, let's say Marchthe sixteenth, twenty twenty two, and
their mind life never gets better thanit was on March the fifteenth, and
we all do that. But bygiving them something special and incredible, mind
blowing encounters with wildlife, they cansee great things can happen for their life.

(19:33):
And that really is the model ofwhat we do. And we don't
get to share a lot of whatwe do, pictures, any stuff anymore
because we're dealing with more sensitive issuesthat kids are going through that I don't
talk about on the air here necessarily, but it's important that we keep going
and doing this. We thank youfor all of your support and put the

(19:53):
word out there that helps us alot too. And when we come back
on More Outdoors, we're gonna shifta lot. Welcome back to Moro Outdoors
on News Talk five sixty k lvI. This is Chester Moore. You
know, hunting never ends in Texas. I just shot a pig at my
friend Derek's deer Lee's out in Fredicksburga couple of weeks ago. In fact,

(20:14):
we have year round exotic and hogshunting, environment hunting, but the
official hunting season has kicked off withdove season opening, an early teal season
coming up. Then we have archeryonly whitetailed, Then we have duck season
of course, with geese mixed inthere, and then we have the general
whitetail season, mule deer season outin West Texas, a prong horned season.

(20:37):
Seriously, lots of cool stuff goingon, and I wanted to kind
of run through some of these andgive my thoughts on the opportunities for these
particular hunts in Texas and give yousome nuggets that maybe you didn't know of.
I mean, dove season is kindof like, I'm gonna be honest
with you, I've never been ahuge I love to eat doves. I've

(21:02):
been dove hunting quite a few times. It's just never been something I was
like really hardcore about, like alot of guys. But dove hunting in
Texas. There are more dove killedin Texas than there are living in most
states there. For example, youknow, there's like forty million dove in
Texas. Let me repeat that,about forty million dove in Texas and about

(21:26):
four hundred thousand dove hunters. Ifevery dove hunter in the state you know
shot, you know, ten dove, there'd be four million hard. I
don't know what the harvest rate isrecently, but that you know, most
of the time that's somebody going onetime. But there it's a very,
very big thing in Texas. Andthere are more dove hunters in Texas and

(21:52):
there are deer hunters in most states. It's just a big deal. And
I don't think it quant gets highlightedquite enough because it's not something people like
train up for. You know,they just go out usually hunt the first
couple of weekends and that's it.You know. Actually, some of the
better dove huntings in the in themiddle of the dove season, when no
one's out there. We have whitewing dove, but are increasing even in

(22:12):
Southeast Texas. Of course, mourningdove is the basis of most from the
hunting. And I'm give you aquick story about a white wing dove.
I was fishing, you know,years ago at a rig that was about
three to four miles off the Louisianacoast, right off Sabine Passed, and
there was a and I had Iran a picture of this in the Porto
Arthur News at the time. Therewas a white wing dove sitting on the

(22:36):
oil rig just taking a rest,and I got to think this thing flew
across the Gulf of Mexico. Imean, how crazy is that? That
was just a neat little thing tosee. But dove season is upon.
It is happening right now. Theweather, you know, who knows all
the rain room been getting late.We have no rain and then dove season
comes to get a lot of rain. But it could benefit the teal hunters
putting some fresh water out on themarsh and some water in some of these

(22:59):
pot We'll see what happens. Butteal season has always been a favorite of
mine. Blue wing teal are thefirst waterfowl to migrate. They start migrating
like in August and small numbers,and then like the first full moon in
September, the full moon in September, they typically come in mass and lots
and lots of birds. And thisyear is a mega year for blueing teal.

(23:23):
Blueing teal are getting close to Usurpingmallards is the most numerous breeding duck
in North America. They're a veryvery successful duck and in my opinion,
the finest eating of waterfowl. Idefy you to find anything better in the
waterfowl world than chicken fried blue wingteal breast. It's a shame to not

(23:47):
the size of a turkey or anostrich for that sake, because it's so
good. But it's very very goodmeat. And you know, early teal
season, you can also shoot greenwings that they if they're out there,
or cinnamons, which are are youknow, cinnamons are kind of like an
exotic duck to Texas. We don'tget tons of them. They're mainly a
Pacific flyaway bird, but they areabsolutely beautiful and every once in a while

(24:12):
someone can get one of those guys. Interestingly, green wing numbers are down
this year, which we'll have someimpact a little bit in the regular duck
season. And what's interesting about thatis blue wings nest in what's called the
Prairie Pothole region North Dakota, SouthDakota, parts of Montana, you know,
parts of Minnesota up into Prairie Canada. The green wing teal breeds in

(24:37):
the boreal forest of western Canada,and it's you that area. If you
look at what happened last year Washington, Oregon drawtwise also happened across the border
in parts of Canada, so thatprobably had a pretty big impact on that.
Now what I want, I likegiving you these nuggets here. You
know, a lot of teal areborn in Canada. They fly all the

(25:02):
way down, some of them intoSouth America. Nineteen ninety nine, I
hunted blue wing teal in Winnie,Texas with will Baby, who is still
in operation with Central Flyway Outfitters,and I kid you not in December that
year. Just a few months later, I saw blue wing teal lighting in
a cove that I was fishing forpeacock bass in Venezuela. It's amazing to

(25:27):
think that little bird can make thatbig migration, some of them all the
way down to South America, whichis just incredible and shows that It's one
of the things I've always been enamoredwith waterfowl is the migration. I mean,
it's really a remarkable thing to thinkabout. You know, how many

(25:48):
calories they got to expend and gettingthat far, and how do they know
where they're going, And it's justan incredible marvel of God's creation to think
about what those waterfowl do in termsof migrations. It just it's really is
a mind blowing thing. I thinkit's I think it's absolutely incredible, you
know, And of course I'm notgonna go CONSECUTI the I'm gonna jump right
into the waterfowl, the big waterfowlseason. You know, there are so

(26:12):
many voices out there talking about duckhunting and some of the problems with federal
management in terms of allowing you know, certain kinds of crops to stand in
stopping ducks coming down, and there'sall those kind of issues that always always
float around the waterfowl world. Andthe thing that is unfortunate about that is

(26:37):
a lot of that does that haveanything to do with like whether the population's
doing well and the habitat's doing well, stuff like that, and also just
kind of unfortunately on online, peoplelike controversy and whether you know, whether
you believe certain theories or you youknow, you're frustrated with the FEDS because
of regulations over the last twenty years. I think we've missed some of the

(27:03):
beauty and majesty that just happens induck season and waterfowl. I mean,
incredible, incredible stuff, and we'vebeen very fortunate. Think about the drought
that's happening out west. It's amazingthat year after year after year, for
like the last twenty five years,we have had pretty consistent flights of ducks

(27:27):
in the Prairie Pothole region. Letme tell you something, though, if
we have a drought like they're havingin Nevada and parts of California and parts
of Utah and parts of Oregon,it's gonna be wild, folks. They're
gonna have to cut limits. Peopleare gonna freak out, Controversy is gonna
be worse. It's gonna be crazy. But the fact that that land up

(27:52):
there is so fertile when they doget rain, these I've been up there
with ducks unlimited before. These temporarywetlands are incredible sources of life. And
most of those ducks that come.We're in the Central Flyaway here in Texas.
If you're listening to Louisiana, you'rein the Mississippi Flyway. So like
where I live in Orange, ilive a few miles from Screen River,
so I'm like literally, I mean, I'm right on the edge of two

(28:15):
flyways. And most of those duckscome from the Prairie Pothole region, and
it's important for us to think aboutwhat's happening on those prairie potholes. You
know, how many are being convertedto corn crops for ethanol, when in
reality that's a subsidized industry and they'redestroying native grasslands, and native grasslands are

(28:41):
radically better for duck nesting and lotsof other wildlife. So lots of issues,
lots of stuff in ducks. AndI had to mention this stuff because
pretty much in Southeast Texas, ifyou mentioned duck hunting, somebody's gonna talk
about that stuff. And that's fine. We may do a on that later
this year with some couple of differentkind of experts, But I wanted to

(29:03):
get back to the basis of let'sput some focus on what's going on in
that prairie pod Hoole region, alsoin our wintering grounds, to make sure
that we have quality duck habitat whereverwe at, that we have quality duck
habitat. That's a very very importantthing. And because these are migratory birds,

(29:26):
literally, what happens in Mexico andparts of South America could impact bluing
teal. Certainly, what happens inSoutheast Texas impacts think about the lack of
rice agriculture we have now compared towhat we did. That's one of the
reasons we don't have as many ducks. We don't have as much food,
and we've degraded a lot of thewetlands out there with saltwater intrusion, lots
of stuff. It's a complex mixthat makes the waterfowl thing tick and it's

(29:52):
just really really interesting stuff. Andwe come back on More Outdoors. We're
gonna talk deer and some other gaminganimals in Texas. Welcome back to More
Outdoors on News Talk five sixty klvI. Check out my writings at Higher
Calling Donnette follow me online at theChestermer on Instagram, and you can also

(30:15):
follow me a Higher Calling Wildlife onFacebook. And folks, don't forget there's
a podcast of this program, MoreOutdoors. Go to KLVI dot com,
click on the podcast link at thetop of the page. Listen to archival
programs going back several years, andyou can listen via the iHeartRadio app.
Talking about the hunting seasons in Texas, covered the dove thing, went really
in depth into some waterfowl stuff andof course deer season. I mean,

(30:40):
that's Texas is a deer hunting state. I mean, that's that's the thing.
You think Texas, you think deerhunting. And of course the white
tail season, both archery and thegeneral season is coming up. And you
know, Texas deer numbers have reallywent up the last about three years.
And it shows you what drought cando. You know, we're back in

(31:00):
a drought cycle, but for aboutthree years we were out of a drought
cycle in a lot of South Texasand the Texas Hill Country, and our
deer numbers went from being about threepoint seventy five million to over five million
in Texas. And that's astounding becausenot only did they go over five million,

(31:21):
they went over five million with lesshabitat. Have you been in the
Texas Hill country lately? There's thingsdeveloped from one end to the other,
and so is a lot of theseTexas and parts of South Texas. So
it's a marvel to see. Butwhite tail numbers are way up, and
you know, people predict this andthey predict that about white tail season in

(31:41):
Texas. Look, white tails arenot migratory. They don't move really long
distances like elk do and things likethat. So deer hunt's gonna be what
it's gonna be, you know,a lot a lot of it. In
Texas, we say, well,if we you know, if the acorns
are real bad this year, we'llhave them coming to the corn. In

(32:02):
other states where baiting's not legal,that's not an issue. But I think
they're gonna be a lot of bigdeer killed this year, just judging from
what I'm hearing from people seeing stuffon game cameras. And look, it
depends on where you're hunting and howmuch time you spend in the woods and
sort of the luck of the drawon the deer thing. But Texas white

(32:23):
tail numbers are big and they've boomedagain. It's pretty incredible. I didn't
know we would ever get back upto that five million level that it was
for so many years of my careerdoing this. So that's kind of an
interesting thing to look at. Somethingelse that's went up as mule deer populations.
I don't have the current mule deeressen, but I believe it's back
again up around two hundred thousand plusmule deer. You got to figure this

(32:47):
is only in parts of the Panhandle, and it's in the trans Peikos that
we have these mule deer, andyou know, it's amazing to me how
many Texans don't realize we have avib brit mule deer population and I think
one of the number one if you'rein East Texas. That's a long shot.
But almost all mule deer huntings onprivate land in Texas and it costs

(33:10):
big bucks. Texas produces some bigmule deer and there is an aura about
getting a Texas mule deer. Sothere are some mega mega mule deer taken
and it costs mega megabucks. Thereare a few draw hunts, like at
Black Gap Wildlife Management Area, differentplaces out there. There's like, you

(33:31):
know, different things with Texas parksand wildlife. But it's not like parts
of East Texas where you can gohunt national forests for white tails. We
don't have any national forest. Youknow, anyone can show up stuff our
units like you do in Colorado andget a tag. In Texas for mule
deer that is all privately owned.Other than a few places, I mean,

(33:52):
they do a few a few huntsat Elephant Mountain, Black Gap,
Sierra Diablo, I think Big BenRanch, not the national Park. We
have some hunts but other than that, it's all private. So that's way
I don't hear a whole lot aboutit. Something you hear even less of
is the prong horn season in Texas. There is a limited pronghorn seedson in
Texas. There's been any animal inTexas has been beaten down by drought and

(34:15):
predation, all kinds of problems.It is the prong horn. Also caught
a pronghorn anal, although not technicallyan antelope. Yeah, we got prong
horns in Texas, and once again, almost all of it is on private
land. That's why I don't heara whole lot about that. And they're
not real, real numerous. Imean, if you hear someone going pronghorning,
they're probably out in Wyoming. They'reprobably out in New Mexico or somewhere.

(34:38):
And I have a real affinity forthese animals. You know. The
first time I really saw like alot of them was about four years ago.
But the first ones I ever saw, believe it or not, we're
in California, walking out of arice field on the edge of the Sacramento
National Wildlife Refuge. Apparently it's somekind of rare subspecies of pronghorn but they're

(35:00):
walking out of a rice field,which completely blew my mind because you think
of a pronghorn being out in thedistant prairies and stuff like that. The
places I probably seen the most you'reout in Nevada. When I was driving
between Reno and Las Vegas looking forbig horns, I came across a stretch
of military property, which most ofthat out there is military property, and

(35:22):
there are prong horns everywhere, superbeautiful animals. And my favorite pronghorn memory
is photographing these two bucks fighting forlike thirty minutes, and I finally got
tired of shooting pictures. They're literallyrunning circles around me. And I went
down the road and I found agrizzly. Some ladies were taking pictures just
grizzly sow way out there and cubs. I come back like two hours later

(35:45):
and they're still throwing down. Itwas hilarious. But they are a very
underappreciated game animal. And look,no game animal is affordable these days if
you do an outfitted hunt, notfor like like we think of a really
easily affordable anybody can do. Butthey are probably the most affordable big game
animal out there, and the successrates even for bow hunting are very high

(36:08):
because they come to these water holesin the summer. They put these like
shoot through ground blinds out and theprong horns walk up to them. Really
really cool, special animal, andyou know, we have them in Texas.
There's also a huntable population in Oklahoma, so we're sort of, you
know, surrounded by prong horns atleast half the state. Super super beautiful

(36:31):
and the fastest animal in North America. I kid you not. And I
got a great story on prong horns. So when I was in Yellowstone last
year, I was in Lamar Valleyand which is an incredible place. It's
just an open valley between mountain rangesand it's like twenty six miles long.
The road through there with just atwo lane road and that's it, and

(36:52):
probably twenty six to thirty miles wide. It's like my dream place because there
are pronghorn, elk, mule deer, there's big horns in part of the
mountain part of it, grizzlies,black bears, lots of trout in the
streams. I mean, it's justlike epic and bison all over the place,
wool gray wolves. It's amazing,right, It's just dream place.

(37:15):
So I'm out there and I seethese two wolves and I got like a
crappy picture because it was literally likea mile away. But you see a
black wolf and a regular standard coloredgray wolf, and there are two prong
horn and they you I'm watching themtry to sneak up on the prong horn,
and the prong horn let him getabout fifty yards and his prong horn

(37:35):
like hit hyper space like consilo.A dozen of lineum falcon and star wars
just cho out of there, andthe wolves try to sneak back up,
and the next time they let himget like thirty yards and then they just
boom took off again. The wolvesare getting a lot slower here, and
they finally in the little these pronghorn let him get about twenty five yards
away, and they just took offlike a bolt of lightning. And the
wolves like, forget it, can'tdo it. It was just funny.

(37:58):
They were literally trying to hunt thosepronghorn and when they're sitting there, they
were like exhausting the prong horn andlooking at them from like, you know,
half a mile away, which washilarious. Herd a bison came through
and the lead bison was a cowand she had a baby with her,
and dude, they looked at thosewolves and wolves hijacked out of there.

(38:19):
Man, they wouldn't want nothing todo with those mean mama bison. You
know you're hearing that enthusiasm in myvoice and these anecdotes about things that we
have in Texas. You know,we don't think about pronghorn and mule ear
and all that kind of stuff thatmuch. We talk about big horns on
here quite a bit. We havea lot of great resources. But that
enthusiasm that you hear my voice there, that's the important stuff. Look,

(38:43):
folks, life is hard, sometimesvery hard, and our world is falling
apart around us. But when yougo out into the great outdoors, you
think about God's creation, God himselfand the majesty of the creation. I
get to go see wildlife stuff.I don't always get to be in the
Lamar Valley of Yellowstone, which Iwould love to be right now. It's

(39:04):
a great time of year to bethere. But just being out in the
swamp, being on the deer lease, being out in the coastal prairie,
being on the bay, being inthe Gulf of Mexico. You never know
what you're gonna see, what you'regonna experience, and I guarantee you what
you're gonna see and experience there isbetter than we're you can do sitting in
front of the TV or the computerscreen. You need to get recharged and

(39:24):
inspire to go back out there.And you know, hunting seasons here.
So we've been talking about we gotsome cool opportunities in Texas and I never
want you to take that stuff forgranted. To me, it's important that
we don't take this stuff for grantedbecause it's easy to do, and you
know, make a goal set upand save money for a prong horn hunt

(39:45):
or a mule deer hunter or whateveryou want to do, or fly fishing
expedition. I did that last year. Say it that for about a year
me and my buddy went to Floridafishing and caught bonefish and peacock bass and
large mouth and tartan and all kindof cools. Great things can still happen
even though the world's falling apart aroundas far. God bless you and have
a great outdoors weekend.